What Jewelcrafting Creates

Up through level 60, jewelcrafting only serves to create rings and necklaces. After entering Outland, however, jewelcrafting has an entirely new sense of purpose, cutting gems to place inside the sockets that are found only on Outland equipment.

What Jewelcrafting Requires

Jewelcrafting requires gems. Lots and lots of gems. And gems don't drop very frequently. Fortunately JC'ers also get a skill called Prospecting that allows them to destroy stacks of ore to search them for gems, similiar to how an enchanter disenchants magical items. This means that jewelcrafters need ore -- raw ore, not smelted bars -- and for that they are most frequently also miners.

Is Jewelcrafting For Me?

Jewelcrafting is a tradeskill of only moderate importance while leveling. It allows players to cover equipment slots that would otherwise be empty for many levels, but it isn't very flashy. At higher levels, there are always players looking for jewelcrafters to prospect their ore for them or to cut a gem. It is very much a support tradeskill like enchanting, and it is perfectly reasonable for anyone to be doing it -- even orc warriors.

In terms of making money, jewelcrafting is very expensive to get started. The amount of dedication required to leveling JC from 200 to 300 is significant. Once past that level, there is always a market for gems, but that market always has the same demand and on some servers is flooded by supply. How profitable one can be with jewelcrafting depends heavily on your server's economy and the rare recipes that you possess.

Being a jewelcrafter provides access to special figurines that go in the Trinket slot. Unlike some professions, these self rewards are available at very low levels and have a superior version in the 60s. There are some noteworthy trinkets available for high end jewelcrafters. One of the examples is [1], which is one if not the best trinkets for rogues in PVP. Jewelcrafters also have access to special self-only gem cuts that are superior to the standard kind they can sell to others.

New in Wrath of the Lich King

Jewelcrafting Quests

Several new rough gems, gem cuts, meta gems and recipes have been added with the Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK) expansion but some gems have also had their stats changed to accomodate larger changes that have been made.

For example, across the board in WotLK, +healing and +spell damage have been rolled together into a single stat that effects both damage and healing spells. This stat is now called +spell power. Jewelcrafting gems have had their stats adjusted to match. For example, a Luminous Flame Spessarite which has +healing and +spell Dmg on it would have simple +Spellpower on it in WotLK. This could provide quite the boon to Holy Paladins with the Potent/Reckless cuts which previously gave +spell dmg and crit or haste, it can now boost both healing and spell crit/haste.

New Quest/Specialization

There is a new quest offered to high level Jewelcrafters that grants them the Gem Perfection ability. What this does is allows jewlcrafters to sometimes improve the quality of on uncommon gem into a "perfect" gem with slightly better stats. Note that this would only apply to Northrend gems.

Daily Quests

WotLK now offeres 6 daily quests for Jewelcrafters! These can be picked up from Timothy Jones in Dalaran and they all center around shipments and require the gathering of various types of gems.

Blood Jade Amulet - Bring a Vrykul Amulet, a Jagged Dark Jade and a Runed Bloodstone to Timothy Jones in Dalaran. You can find a Vrykul Amulet on any Northrend Vrykul.